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Shall  Business  Be  Disrupted 

BY 

MMEDIATE  TARIFF 
REVISION 

REPLY  OF 

HEODORE  JUSTICE 

Director  of  the 

American  Protective  Tariff  League 

o  the  address  of  the  Secretary  of  the  New  York  Committee  of  the 

American  Reciprocal  Tariff  League 


Delivered  March  8,  1906,  before  the 
Board  of  Directors  of  the 


TRADES  LEAGUE  OF  PHILADELPHIA 


r> 

U  O  f  ■ 


Immediate  Tariff  Revision. 


To  the  Trades  League,  Philadelphia ,  Pa. : 

Gentlemen:  The  address  by  William 
E.  Corwine,  secretary  of  the  New  York 
Committee  of  the  American  Reciprocal 
Tariff  League,  delivered  before  the 
Trades  League,  printed  and  circulated 
by  the  latter,  contains  matter  that  makes 
it  necessary  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
Trades  League  to  Mr.  Corwine,  and  the 
motives  of  the  association  which  he  rep¬ 
resents,  whose  title  being  a  close  coun¬ 
terfeit  of  The  American  Protective 
Tariff  League  may  lead  to  confusion 
in  the  minds  of  many,  who  may  not 
know  that  the  objects  of  these  quite 
different  associations  are  exactly  op¬ 
posed  to  each  other.  The  American 
Protective  Tariff  League  is  organized 
and  operating  to  build  up  and  defend 
American  industries,  whereas  the  effect 
of  the  present  active  work  of  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Reciprocal  Tariff  League  is  to 
break  them  down. 

Mr.  Corwine  maintains  close  relations 
with  Mr.  Gustav  A.  Schwab,  of  the 
North  German  Lloyd  Steamship  Com¬ 
pany,  of  whom  more  hereafter,  and  both 
gentlemen  were  active  in  the  organiza¬ 
tion  of  the  American  Reciprocal  Tariff 
League,  organized  in  Chicago,  August, 
1905,  the  control  and  operations  of 
which  association  are  practically  in  the 
hands  of  these  two  gentlemen. 

As  Germany  is  the  most  conspicuous 
and  most  successful  Protective  Tariff 
country  in  Europe,  and  in  some  respects 
in  the  whole  world,  the  new  German 
Tariff  law  is  attracting  universal  atten¬ 
tion,  as  it  puts  up  her  own  Tariff  in 
order  to  force  down  that  of  ours.  The 
reciprocity  convention,  held  in  Chicago 


last  August,  was  largely  inspired  by  this 
new  German  Tariff,  and  that  convention 
surrendered  American  to  German  ideas 
and  resolved  to  memorialize  Congress  to 
enact  a  new  Tariff  law  similar  to  that 
of  Germany,  with  maximum  and  mini¬ 
mum  rates. 

The  American  Reciprocal  Tariff 
League,  with  its  headquarters  in  Chi¬ 
cago,  and  the  '  Merchants’  Association, 
of  New  York,  work  in  absolute  harmony 
in  their  efforts  to  break  down  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Tariff  system  in  favor  of  Germany. 
The  Dingley  act,  which  embodies  the 
American  system,  has  promoted  our 
manufacturing  industries  to  such  a  de¬ 
gree  that  the  people  of  the  United  States 
are  the  wonder  and  envy  of  the  world. 
This,  Mr.  Corwine’s  associates  are  try¬ 
ing  to  upset  in  order  that  Germany  may 
benefit  by  it. 

Effects  of  Dingley  Act. 

There  is  not  now  nor  has  there  been 
any  widespread  demand  here  for 
change  in  our  Tariff  law.  Of  course 
no  Tariff  law  is  perfect.  The  Dingley 
act  corrected  the  errors  of  the  Wilson 
and  McKinley  acts,  and  is  probably  as 
near  perfect  as  any  Tariff  law  we  shall 
ever  produce.  Human  ingenuity  could 
not  frame  a  Tariff  law  that  would  suit 
everybody,  and  if  we  revised  the  Tariff 
now  there  would  at  once  again  be  a 
clamor  for  its  further  revision  by  some 
dissatisfied  faction.  The  law  we  have 
has  worked  so  well  on  the  whole  that 
even  leading  Democrats  acquiesced  in  it 
until  stirred  to  activity  by  such  agita¬ 
tors  as  Mr.  Schwab  and  Mr.  Corwine. 
Under  the  Dingley  act  our  foreign  com¬ 
merce,  for  the  fiscal  year  ending  June 


3 


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30,*"  1906,  will  reach  approximately 
$3,000,000,000,  with  a  balance  of  $600,- 
000,000  in  our  favor.  We  never  before 
had  commerce  even  approximating  this 
great  volume.  Surely  such  a  Tariff  law 
is  good  enough  to  keep. 

The  President  of  the  United  States 
has  been  most  emphatic  in  expressing 
his  views  upon  the  matter,  and  they  are 
to  the  effect  that  when  a  Tariff  law  is 
working  reasonably  well,  as  it  is  now,  it 
ought  not  to  be  disturbed,  unless  the 
benefits  to  result  from  a  change  will 
manifestly  outweigh  the  acknowledged 
disadvantages. 

President  Roosevelt’s  earnest  desire 
to  avoid  unnecessary  disturbances  to 
business  is  shown  in  his  last  public 
speech,  in  which  he  states : 

la  addition  to  honesty  we  need  sanity. 
No  honesty  will  make  a  public  man  useful  if 
that  man  is  timid  or  foolish,  if  he  is  a  hot 
headed  zealot,  or  an  impracticable  visionary, 
for  the  wild  preachers  of  unrest  and  discon- 
-tent,  the  wild  agitators  against  the  existing 
order,  the  men  who  preach  destruction  with¬ 
out  proposing  any  substitutes  for  what  they 
intend  to  destroy,  or  who  propose  a  sub¬ 
stitute  far  worse  than  the  existing  evils — all 
these  men  are  the  most  dangerous  opponents 
of  real  reform.  If  they  get  their  way  they 
will  lead  the  people  into  a  deeper  pit  than 
any  into  which  they  could  fall  under  the 
present  system. 

More  important  than  all  else  is  the  wel¬ 
fare  of  the  wage-earner,  the  welfare  of  the 
tiller  of  the  soil,  and  upon  these  depend  the 
welfare  of  the  entire  nation. 

Who  can  doubt  that  he  had  the  Tariff 
rippers  and  advocates  of  reciprocity  in 
competing  articles  like  Argentine  wool 
and  French  hosiery  in  his  mind  when 
he  uttered  in  his  now  famous  “muck 
rake  speech  ”  these  forcible  and  extreme¬ 
ly  applicable  words? 

Customs  Regulations. 

The  Merchants’  Association,  by  ar¬ 
rangement  of  the  Western  concern,  has 
charge  of  the  Eastern  territory,  and 


both  organizations,  I  am  informed,  are 
quite  successful  in  obtaining  funds  for 
advancing  the  policy  which  they  repre¬ 
sent,  which  may  be  defined  as  follows: 

Tariff  revision,  reciprocity  in  products 
which  we  ourselves  produce,  and  the 
nullification  of  the  administrative  acts 
of  the  Tariff,  which,  Yon  Buelow  recent¬ 
ly  remarked,  would  be  more  useful  to 
German  exporters  than  any  reductions 
in  the  Dingley  schedules  could  possibly 
be. 

Changes  in  the  customs,  rules  and 
regulations  are  sought  in  order  that 
they  may  cripple  the  customs  policy  of 
the  United  States,  partly  in  the  interest 
of  foreign  owned  transatlantic  steamship 
lines,  of  importers  and  traders  in  for¬ 
eign  products,  and  to  the  detriment  and 
injury  of  domestic  producers.  They 
seek  to  make  such  changes  in  our  cus¬ 
toms  regulations  as  would  make  it  more 
easy  for  foreign  articles  to  enter  the 
ports  of  this  country,  and  particularly 
those  of  German  make. 

Honest  importers,  who  are  giving  cor¬ 
rect  returns  of  the  valuation  of  their 
commodities,  are  interested  as  much  as 
are  the  revenue  officers  of  our  Govern¬ 
ment  in  seeing  that  there  shall  be  no 
undervaluations  by  dishonest  importers 
who  want  the  administrative  acts 
changed  in  order  to  make  possible  sys¬ 
tematic  undervaluation.  These  -admin¬ 
istrative  acts,  which  they  attack,  pro¬ 
vide  the  machinery  to  prevent  roguery 
of  this  kind,  and  the  American  people 
insist  on  keeping  this  machinery  in  mo¬ 
tion.  We  must  be  wary  to  see  that 
those  who  wish  to  avoid  the  payment  of 
proper  duties  do  not  use  the  Trades 
League  to  further  their  ends. 

It  has  been  charged  that  the  present 
and  most  active  policy  of  these  organ¬ 
izations  (their  legislative  schemes  hav¬ 
ing  failed)  is  to  prevent  the  nomination 

16771 

D 


4 


and  election  of  Protectionist  members 
of  Congress.  There  is  evidence  that 
they  propose  to  canvass  every  corner  of 
the  United  States,  and  they  seem  to 
have  begun  their  work  in  Philadelphia 
with  the  Trades  League.  They  admit 
that  they  are  putting  reading  matter  to 
this  effect  in  the  leading  agricultural 
papers  and  paying  for  it  at  advertise¬ 
ment  rates.  It  is  therefore  impossible 
to  escape  the  conclusion  that  Tariff  tear¬ 
ing  legislation  and  its  consequent  dis¬ 
turbance  to  business  is  to  be  forced  to 
an  issue  by  Mr.  Corwine’s  associates  in 
this  year’s  Congressional  campaigns. 

Among  the  principal  backers  of  the 
opponents  of  Protection  in  this  line  are 
the  transatlantic  steamship  companies, 
the  Western  packing  industries,  the  mak¬ 
ers  of  agricultural  implements  and 
other  exporters  who  seek  to  expand  a 
foreign  market  which  at  present  takes 
only  3  per  cent,  of  our  entire  produc¬ 
tion,  there  being  a  far  better  market 
at  home  for  the  other  97  per  cent,  of  it. 

Activity  of  Foreign  Steamship  Com- 
“  panies. 

Now  let  us  see  whom  Mr.  Schwab  and 
Mr.  Corwine  represent.  Mr.  Schwab 
represents  a  German  steamship  com¬ 
pany,  that  wished  to  throttle  our  ef¬ 
forts  to  build  up  an  American  mercan¬ 
tile  marine,  so  essential  as  an  auxiliary 
to  our  navy. 

An  officer  of  his  line  recently  called 
the  attention  of  an  American  passenger 
to  the  fact  that  the  splendid  fighting 
ships  of  our  navy  are  all  under  offi¬ 
cered  and  under  manned,  and  that  in 
case  of  war  we  have  no  trained  auxil¬ 
iary  resources  to  fall  back  upon. 

They  are  desperately  afraid  that  the 
United  States  will  at  last  apply  to  its 
merchant  marine,  through  subsidy, 
that  Protective  policy  so  wonderfully 
successful  with  the  German  mercantile 


marine  (which  is  the  most  heavily  sub¬ 
sidized  in  the  whole  world),  and  also 
with  the  Tariff  Protected  manufactur¬ 
ing  industries  of  the  United  States. 

They  know,  as  do  all  other  foreign 
ship  owners,  that  if  the  United  States 
does  adopt  that  policy  the  foreign 
monopoly  to  which  we  pay  out  $1,000,- 
000,000  every  five  years  for  carrying 
our  commerce,  every  dollar  of  which 
should  be  earned  by  Americans,  and 
which  monopoly  now  grips  the  throat 
of  American  commerce,  will  be  broken. 
Consequently  these  powerful  foreign 
steamship  companies  are  doing  every¬ 
thing  they  can  to  delude  Congress  and 
baffle  the  efforts  of  President  Roosevelt 
and  others  who  seek  to  create  a  great 
American  shipping  industry. 

The  Tariff  has  so  stimulated  our  steel 
and  iron  industries  that  we  are  now  ex¬ 
porting  bridges  and  locomotives  on  a 
large  scale.  Some  one  has  recently  said 
that  a  steel  steamship  is  practically  a 
bridge  with  a  locomotive  inside  of  it, 
which,  in  a  rough  way,  illustrates  our 
readiness  to  build  up  a  mercantile  ma¬ 
rine  just  as  soon  as  Congress  applies  to 
it,  through  the  Ship  Subsidy  bill,  the 
system  of  subsidies  that  has  built  up 
the  mercantile  marines  of  not  only  Ger¬ 
many,  but  of  France  and  England  as 
well. 

The  British  Government  has  practical¬ 
ly  advanced  to  the  Cunard  Company  the 
whole  cost  of  building  their  newest  big 
ships  in  order  that  Great  Britain  may 
have  their  use,  as  auxiliary  to  its  navy, 
in  case  of  war.  Contrast  with  this  our 
deplorable  condition,  with  no  auxiliary 
ships  at  all  for  use  in  case  of  foreign 
war. 

The  real  character  and  aims  of  for¬ 
eign  ship  owners  may  be  conjectured 
from  the  fact  that  one  of  the  German 
steamship  companies,  the  Hamburg- 


American  Company,  took  two  of  their 
fastest  steamships  out  of  the  New  York 
service  during  our  war  with  Spain  and 
deliberately  sold  them  to  the  Spanish 
Government  to  burn,  sink  and  destroy 
the  commerce  of  the  American  people, 
whose  patronage  had  rolled  up  enor¬ 
mously  the  company’s  dividends.  Our 
soldiers  in  the  meanwhile  were  crowded 
like  cattle  in  such  old  cast-off  tubs  as, 
by  straining  international  laws  to  the 
breaking  point,  we  could  procure,  and 
while  our  Government  was  embarrassed 
in  every  way  for  lack  of  American 
ships  fast  steamers  were  transferred 
from  the  German  mercantile  marine  to 
assist  our  foe  and  to  defeat  our  army 
and  navy.  One  if  not  both  the  ships 
soft  by  the  Hamburg-American  Line 
formed  a  part  of  the  squadron  with 
which  Admiral  Camara  sailed  from 
Cadiz  to  strike  Admiral  Dewey  at 
Manila. 

At  the  same  time  the  German  squad¬ 
ron  under  von  Diederichs  at  Manila  was 
harassing  Admiral  Dewey  in  every  pos¬ 
sible  way  to  the  verge  of  actual  hostili¬ 
ties.  It  is  stated,  and  I  believe  it  to  be 
true,  that  both  the  Hamburg-American 
and  the  North  German  Lloyd  are  largely 
controlled  by  members  of  the  Imperial 
family  and  the  Imperial  Government  of 
Germany,  and  that  they  are  virtually  a 
branch  of  the  Imperial  naval  reserve. 

Thus  has  the  whole  elaborate  Ger¬ 
man  Imperial  programme  aided '  the 
German  mercantile  marine,  involving 
not  only  grants  to  transatlantic  lines, 
but  often  the  carriage  at  only  actual 
cost  on  German  State  railroads,  of  ma¬ 
terial  for  use  in  German  shipyards. 
The  offering  of  preferential  railway 
rates  on  goods  exported  by  German 
ships  and  the  interference  with  the  pas¬ 
sage  through  Germany  of  immigrants 
holding  tickets  by  other  than  these  Ger¬ 


man  lines  are  parts  of  this  practice. 
These  German  steamship  companies  are, 
you  will  see,  in  one  way  or  another  the 
creatures  of  governmental  favor,  and 
this  is  the  nation  that  Mr.  Corwine 
would  persuade  you  Americans  to  fa¬ 
vor  commercially. 

Mr.  Corwine  comes  before  you  to  urge 
special  Tariff  reductions  on  imports 
from  Germany  in  exchange  for  rates 
that  have  been  marked  up  in  order  to 
offer  a  ma.rked-down  concession.  This 
is  not  such  reciprocity  as  American  ex¬ 
porters  have  been  seeking. 

The  only  way  to  meet  it  would  be  to 
follow  the  German  example  and  enact 
a  law  increasing  the  rates  now  in  force, 
to  be  used  only  against  nations  who 
make  reprisals  on  us,  so  as  to  make  con¬ 
cessions  to  friendly  nations  that  would 
not  fall  below  the  present  Dingley  act 
rates  of  duty.  As  Secretary  Shaw  has 
so  often  and  so  well  expressed  it,  Ger¬ 
many  offers  to  treat  the  United  States 
as  well  as  she  treats  other  friendly 
Powers  if  we  will  in  return  treat  Ger¬ 
many  better  than  we  treat  any  other 
friendly  Poicer.  To  make  such  an  agree¬ 
ment  with  Germany  would  be  equiva¬ 
lent  to  a  commercial  alliance  and  dis¬ 
crimination  against  every  other  commer¬ 
cial  rival  of  Germany. 

On  February  18  Prince  von  Buelow, 
the  Imperial  Chancellor,  sent  to  the 
Reichstag  a  bill  for  the  extension  of 
the  United  States  Tariff  because  he,  at 
least,  realized  that  in  case  of  a  Tariff 
war  with  the  United  States  much  of  the 
merchandise  now  and  heretofore  pass¬ 
ing  between  Germany  and  the  United 
States  would  still  continue  to  be  han¬ 
dled  by  us  through  Free-Trade  England 
without  any  increase  in  duty,  but  in¬ 
stead  of  being  carried  as  now  in  Ger¬ 
man  ships  would  be  carried  in  British 
bottoms. 


Germany  Not  to  Write  Our  TarilTUaws. 

Baron  von  Sternoerg  learned  in  Wash¬ 
ington  that  the  United  States  was  not 
to  be  bluffed  by  Germany  and  would 
not  permit  Germany  to  write  the  Tariff 
laws  of  the  United  States. 

A  canvass  of  the  members  of  Con¬ 
gress  showed  clearly  that  they  would 
not  submit  to  German  reprisal,  but  that 
they  would  enact  something  like  the 
McCleary  bill,  giving  to  Germany  the 
same  minimum  Tariff  rates  that  were 
given  to  England,  who  buys  more  of  us 
than  all  the  rest  of  the  world  put  to¬ 
gether,  and  would  then  apply  a  penalty 
of  25  per  cent,  to  German  imports  of 
all  kinds,  whether  now  free  or  dutiable, 
If  Germany  discriminated  against  the 
United  States.  Such  retaliation  would 
hurt  Germany  more  than  it  would  hurt 
us. 

The  German  threat  of  declaring  a 
Tariff  war  against  the  United  States 
was  therefore  dropped,  and  will  not  now 
be  carried  into  effect. 

The  contention  of  Mr.  Corwine  that 
“  it  is  clearly  up  to  us  in  the  next  six¬ 
teen  months  to  adopt  a  Tariff  policy 
which  will  enable  us  to  make  permanent 
our  present  trade  relations  with  Ger¬ 
many  ”  is  a  poor  bluff,  and  is  a  conten¬ 
tion  based  upon  the  single  fact,  perfectly 
obvious  to  those  who  will  take  the 
pains  to  grasp  the  situation  in  all  its 
aspects,  that  Germany  was  certain  to  be 
the  chief  sufferer  in  a  Tariff  conflict 
with  the  United  States,  and  therefore 
could  not  afford  it  and  would  not  adopt 
it.  Mr.  Schwab  and  Mr.  Corwine  both 
know  this  very  well.  Our  imports  from 
Germany  consist  almost  exclusively  of 
manufactured  articles  which  we  can 
produce  in  our  own  factories  or  buy  as 
well  in  Free-Trade  England. 

Our  sales  to  Germany  for  the  most 
part  are  materials,  such  as  cotton  and 


copper,  which  Germany  must  have  and 
cannot  obtain  from  any  other  country. 

The  position  of  the  United  States  has 
at  all  times  been  an  impregnable  one. 
All  we  had  to  do  was  to  state  that  Ger¬ 
many  was  to  he  treated  exactly  on  the 
most  favorable  basis  of  any  other  na¬ 
tion,  but  not  any  better  than  England, 
our  best  customer,  and  then  let  Ger¬ 
many  do  the  worrying,  which  she  has 
done.  Finding  that  she  could  not  com¬ 
pel  us  to  accede  to  her  defires  she  has 
backed  down,  and  will  always  do  so 
when  our  position  of  equal  fairness  to 
all  countries  is  not  deviated  from.  The 
McCleary  policy  of  a  minimum  and  max¬ 
imum  Tariff,  with  the  Dingley  act  as 
the  minimum,  but  with  a  penalty  of  25 
per  cent,  additional  duties  on  the  im¬ 
ports  from  any  nation  that  discriminates 
unjustly  against  the  products  of  the 
United  States,  is  a  policy  that  will  al¬ 
ways  win  popular  support,  as  its  mere 
introduction  into  Congress  has  recently 
done. 

To  Force  German  Competitive  Prod¬ 
ucts  luto  the  United  States. 

What  Germany  seeks  is  to  force  a 
wider  opening  for  the  entrance  of  her 
competitive  products  into  the  United 
States. 

Our  splendid  market  of  85,000,000 
people,  who  are  the  most  liberal  pur¬ 
chasers  on  earth,  was  her  main  objec¬ 
tive.  The  accomplished  fact  of  the 
American  Protective  Tariff  system  has 
been  to  raise  the  standard  of  living  in 
this  country,  whidh  makes  this  big  mar¬ 
ket  of  85,000,000  people  the  best  market 
in  the  world.  This  market  is  what 
Germany  is  striving  for,  and  the  trade 
treaties  negotiated  between  her  and 
other  European  nations  were  minor  af¬ 
fairs.  Those  countries  could  not  take 
much  more  than  they  had  been  taking, 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  Amer- 


ican  Tariff  could  be  broken  down  Ger¬ 
many’s  sales  to  this  country  would  be 
doubled,  trebled  or  even  quadrupled,  a 
prize  which  Mr.  Corwine  and  Mr. 
Schwab  and  all  other  German  repre¬ 
sentatives  here  see  is  worth  striving  for. 

They  have  worked  the  German  scare 
for  all  it  was  worth  and,  as  the  event 
has  proved,  for  much  more  than  it  was 
worth.  Mr.  Schwab  and  Mr.  Corwine 
called  together  a  reciprocity  confer¬ 
ence  in  Chicago,  and  the  result  of  that 
movement  was  the  organization  of  the 
American  Reciprocal  Tariff  League, 
whose  main  object  in  its  short  life  so 
far  has  been  to  frighten  the  Western 
farmers  into  fits  at  the  prospect  of  los¬ 
ing  the  market  in  Germany  for  their 
food  products. 

As  has  been  previously  stated,  they 
were  able  to  secure  the  strenuous  co¬ 
operation  of  the  Merchants’  Association 
of  New  York,  the  entire  Democratic 
press  of  the  United  States,  German 
manufacturers  and  American  Free- 
Traders  and  a  number  of  Republican 
newspapers,  who  for  a  time  were  de¬ 
ceived  into  helping  along  the  movement 
to  break  down  the  American  Tariff  sys¬ 
tem,  but  the  determination  expressed  by 
the  McCleary  bill,  with  the  Dingley 
Tariff  as  the  minimum,  and  a  Tariff 
penalty  of  25  per  cent,  additional  as  a 
maximum,  to  be  used  only  as  a  reprisal 
against  nations  warring  upon  us,  has 
enabled  the  American  people  to  hold  for 
the  present  the  American  market  for 
the  benefit  of  American  labor  and  Amer¬ 
ican  industry. 

American  Tariff  Not  to  be  Broken 
Down  to  Flease  Germany. 

The  American  Tariff  must  not  be 
broken  down  to  please  Germany  and 
her  American  reserves  of  Free-Traders, 
Tariff  revisers  and  reciprocarians,  but 
Americans  must  ever  continue  to  write 


American  Tariffs  to  suit  American  and 
not  German  interests. 

From  the  testimony  of  the  expert 
United  States  special  agents  who  work 
in  German  territory  it  has  been  thor¬ 
oughly  demonstrated  that  in  no  respect 
is  the  German  customs  policy  so  rea¬ 
sonable  and  fair  to  American  shippers 
as  is  the  present  policy  of  the  United 
States  to  German  shippers.  A  square 
deal  to  all  is  the  United  States  practice. 

Neither  in  Germany  nor  in  any  other 
country  is  there  an  independent  Board 
of  Appraisers,  such  as  the  United  States 
employ,  but,  on  the  contrary,  in  Ger¬ 
many  the  customs  officers  are  arbitrary 
and  indulge  in  all  sorts  of  unreasonable 
acts  calculated  to  impede  the  introduc¬ 
tion  into  their  markets  of  American 
commodities.  They  find  trivial  excuses 
for  excluding  American  horses,  apples 
and  hog  products,  which  latter  are  most 
carefully  and  scientifically  prepared  for 
export  of  any  similar  products  in  the 
world.  If  therefore  we  have  any  favors 
to  grant  to  foreign  nations  we  should 
give  them  to  England,  our  best  customer, 
who  welcomes  our  exports,  and  not  to 
the  German  nation,  which  inclines  to 
prohibitive  duties  upon  so  many  Amer¬ 
ican  articles  similar  to  those  Germany 
herself  manufactures  or  produces. 

There  is  nothing  that  comes  from 
Germany  that  we  cannot  get  elsewhere, 
and  there  is  nothing  that  we  sell  to 
Germany,  in  case  she  piles  up  a  pro¬ 
hibitive  Tariff  against  our  exports,  that 
we  cannot  indirectly  sell  to  Germany 
through  other  countries  to  whom  Ger¬ 
many  allows  her  minimum  rates. 

That  Threatened  Commercial  War 
Vanishes  Into  Thin  Air. 

The  proposed  prohibitive  German  du¬ 
ties  upon  many  of  our  products  which 
we  are  exporting  to  Germany  in  in¬ 
creasing  quantities,  as  Mr.  Corwine 


clearly  states,  if  carried  into  effect 
without  doubt  “  would  under  the  new 
system  have  borne  so  heavily  upon  some 
of  the  products  of  our  soil  as  to  have 
been  burdensome  to  us,”  but  this  is  not 
so  very'  alarming,  for  Germany  cannot 
afford  to  go  into  a  Tariff  war  with  the 
United  States,  for  whatever  she  ceases 
tp  buy  of  us  us  she  must  buy  elsewhere, 
which  to  some  extent  would  make  an 
opening  and  a  market  elsewhere  for 
these  American  products. 

Mr.  Corwine  speaks  of  the  German 
Tariff  Commission,  composed  of  experts, 
which  made  an  exhaustive  study  of  the 
subject  of  German  trade.  Their  pres¬ 
ent  Tariff  bill  was  formulated  as  the  re¬ 
sult  of  this  study,  and  after  considera¬ 
ble  discussion  in  the  Reichstag  became 
law  over  a  year  ago.  Germany  (hoping 
to  frighten  our  timid  people)  immedi¬ 
ately  gave  notice  to  the  United  States 
that  it  would  become  operative  the 
first  of  March,  1906. 

When  our  Congress  failed  to  take  any 
notice  of  the  situation,  and  when  the 
German  officials  discovered  that  a  pen¬ 
alty  of  25  per  cent,  in  retaliation  was 
more  than  likely  to  be  imposed  on  all 
German  exports  to  this  country,  includ¬ 
ing  many  which  are  now  free,  they  dis¬ 
covered  that  the  United  States  had 
called  Germany’s  bluff.  So  they  laid 
down  their  cards,  and  the  commercial 
war  into  which  in  his  view  we  were 
drifting  and  which  was  so  graphically 
portrayd  by  Mr.  Corwine  in  his  address 
to  the  Trades  League  vanishes  into  thin 
air. 

That  Broad  and  Enlightened  Policy. 

Mr.  Corwine  quotes  President  McKin¬ 
ley  as  stating  that  “  only  a  broad  and 
enlightened  policy  will  keep  what  we 
have.  No  other  policy  will  get  more.” 
That  enlightened  policy,  in  its  perfec¬ 


tion,  is  surely  the  policy  of  the  Ding- 
ley  Tariff  act,  for  under  it  our  average 
annual  imports  in  the  first  two  fiscal 
years  of  this  act  were  valued  at  $656,- 
599,071,  and  the  annual  average  of  the 
last  two  fiscal  years  ending  June  30, 
1905,  was  $1,054,300,221,  an  increase 
of  $397,701,150,  or  over  60  per  cent. 
But  Mr.  Corwine  endeavors  to  make 
us  believe  that  in  order  to  sell  to  a 
country  we  must  buy  from  her.  Let  us 
see  if  this  is  true. 

We  sold  to  foreign  nations  during 
the  first  two  fiscal  years  of  the  Dingley 
Tariff  act  an  annual  average  of  $1,229,- 
252,876  worth  of  merchandise.  But 
during  the  last  two  fiscal  years  of  the 
Dingley  Tariff  act,  ending  June  30, 

1905,  we  sold  to  foreign  nations  mer¬ 
chandise,  the  annual  average  of  which 
was  $1,489,694,468,  an  increase  of  $260,- 
441,592,  or  over  21  per  cent.  This  is 
the  “  broad  and  enlightened  policy  ” 
to  which  President  McKinley  alluded, 
which  for  the  year  ending  June  30, 

1906,  will  probably  reach  $1,800,000,000, 
and,  as  before  stated,  $600,000,000 
worth  more  will  be  sold  to  foreign  na¬ 
tions  under  the  Dingley  Tariff  than  we 
will  buy  of  them.  Is  not  this  policy 
better  than  any  other  that  we  can 
adopt  when  we  find  our  competitors, 
like  Germany,  going  almost  to  the  verge 
of  a  commercial  war  to  force  her  sur¬ 
plus  productions  into  new  markets? 

Resiprocity. 

Mr.  Corwine  advocates  “  reciprocity 
treaties  in  harmony  wfith  the  spirit  of 
the  times,”  but  the  reciprocity  which 
he  and  Germany  propose  is  the  reci¬ 
procity  on  such  competing  articles  as 
Germany  can  produce  at  a  lower  cost 
than  we  can.  This  was  not  the  Mc¬ 
Kinley  idea  of  reciprocity. 

In  effect  it  would  be  Free-Trade, 


9 


which  McKinley  opposed  with  all  his 
force.  As  an  illustration  of  the  only  kind 
of  reciprocity  that  Americans  should 
ever  adopt,  we  should  take  free  from 
Brazil  her  coffee,  which  we  do  not  pro¬ 
duce,  in  exchange  for  the  free  entrance 
into  their  market  of  American  flour, 
which  we  do  produce. 

Any  other  sort  of  reciprocity  in  com¬ 
petitive  products  is  Tariff  reduction. 
Tariff  reduction  is  price  reduction ; 
price  reduction  is  wage  reduction.  Ger¬ 
many  desires  reciprocity  in  woolen 
hosiery  because  she  can  make  it 
cheaper  than  we  can,  for  she  pays  only 
one-tliird  the  wages  that  are  paid  in 
the  same  industry  in  the  United  States. 
Such  reciprocity  would  mean  lack  of 
employment  for  those  of  our  people 
now  employed  in  manufacturing  under¬ 
wear  for  approximately  85,000,000  peo¬ 
ple,  and  as  fast  as  you  throw  out  of 
employment  the  labor  employed  in  such 
vast  industries  you  precipitate  business 
trouble,  and  when  you  multiply  these 
troubles,  as  was  done  by  the  Wilson 
act  for  Tariff  revision  in  1894,  you  pro¬ 
duce  panic. 

Mr.  Corwine  speaks  of  the  failure  of 
the  Senate  to  ratify  the  reciprocity 
treaties  with  the  Argentine  Republic 
and  with  France.  He  failed  to  tell  you 
that  the  Argentine  treaty  failed  because 
it  was  so  drawn  as  to  be  a  serious 
menace  to  the  very  life  of  the  wool  in¬ 
dustry  of  the  United  States.  Reciprocity 
in  wool  would  be  a  move  toward  Free- 
Trade  in  wool,  which  was  tried  with 
such  disastrous  effects  in  Grover  Cleve¬ 
land’s  administration.  The  French 
treaty  was  not  ratified  because  it  was 
found  that  with  it  we  would  have  freer 
trade  in  hosiery,  which  would  have 
ruined  a  very  important  American  in¬ 
dustry.  It  is  very  well  to  propose  re¬ 
ciprocal  treaties,  for  the  word  reciprocal 


sounds  soothing  and  attractive,  but  when 
you  go  into  details  and  come  to  examine 
them  you  soon  find  you  are  against  a 
proposition  to  cripple  an  important 
American  industry.  This  is  what  Presi¬ 
dent  McKinley  in  his  Buffalo  speech 
especially  warned  us  not  to  do. 

Danger  In  Tariff  Revision. 

In  three  months  after  the  Ways  and 
Means  Committee  of  the  House  of  Rep¬ 
resentatives  begins  to  revise  the  Tariff 
on  the  lines  recommended  by  Germany, 
through  the  secretary  of  the  New  York 
Committee  of  the  American  Reciprocal 
Tariff  League,  symptoms  of  a  financial 
panic  would  appear  which  might  be  a 
worse  panic  than  any  this  nation  has 
ever  known.  This  is  because  prices, 
through  the  long  period  of  abounding 
prosperity  have  reached  such  heights, 
that  they  would  now  have  further  to 
fall  to  the  Free-Trade  level  than  ever 
before. 

Those  who  advocate  reciprocity  insist 
that  we  must  invite  importations  if  we 
wish  to  increase  our  exportations.  The 
figures  quoted  above,  showing  the  actual 
commerce  of  this  nation,  disprove  this 
assertion. 

They  urge  that  if  we  place  the  Tariff 
on  some  articles  sufficiently  low  to  in¬ 
sure  a  greater  influx  of  foreign  goods 
the  doors  of  trade  will  automatically 
open  to  us,  and  we  will  have  an  abun¬ 
dant  outlet,  but  an  examination  of  the 
records  shows  nothing  to  justify  this 
claim. 

Never  in  recent  years  has  there  been  a 
period  of  low  Tariff  that  has  not  re¬ 
sulted  in  less  importations,  nor  a  period 
of  high  Tariff  that  has  not  resulted  in 
larger  importations.  This  is  because 
when  our  people  are  prosperous,  as  they 
are  to-day  under  the  Dingley  Tariff  act, 


10 


I 


they  buy  everything  in  sight  and  send 
abroad  for  more. 

When  they  are  suffering  from  the  ef¬ 
fects  of  a  Tariff  for  revenue  only,  or 
from  unwise  reciprocity,  they  are  unable 
to  consume  and  therefore  import  little. 

Whenever  the  American  people  buy 
their  woolens,  and  their  iron  and  steel, 
and  their  articles  of  every  day  consump¬ 
tion  abroad,  American  producers  of  those 
articles  are  out  of  employment  and  our 
consumptive  capacity  is  reduced  to  a 
minimum. 

For  the  four  fiscal  years  of  high  Pro¬ 
tection  in  operation  previous  to  the  Free- 
Trade  Wilson  law  we  imported  for  con¬ 
sumption  an  average  of  $12.21  per  cap¬ 
ita.  During  the  next  four  years  of  the 
revised  Wilson  Tariff,  giving  credit  for 
the  great  influx  of  goods  in  anticipation 
of  the  higher  rate  of  the  forthcoming 
Dingley  act,  we  imported  only  $10.81  per 
capita — a  loss  of  over  $1  per  capita. 
During  the  last  fiscal  year  of  the  pres¬ 
ent  Dingley  act  we  imported  for  con¬ 
sumption  merchandise  valued  at  $13.44 
per  capita,  and  this  year  we  have  in¬ 
creased  our  importations  of  articles  for 
consumption  over  last  year.  If  this  rec¬ 
ord  continues  throughout  the  year,  giv¬ 
ing  credit  for  our  increase  in  population, 
we  will  import  for  consumption  material 
worth  nearly  $16.00  per  capita. 

Never  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States  did  our  people  consume  so  many 
dollars’  worth  of  foreign  goods,  and 
never  in  the  history  of  the  world  did 
any  people  ever  consume  so  many  dol¬ 
lars’  worth  of  domestic  goods  as  we  are 
now  consuming.  Is  it  any  wonder  then 
that  President  Roosevelt  and  Speaker 
Cannon  “stand  pat?” 

What  wonder  is  it  then  that  all  sorts 
of  insidious  efforts  are  being  made  by 
representatives  of  foreign  interests  to 
build  up  organizations  like  the  Ameri¬ 


can  Reciprocal  Tariff  League,  in  order 
that  foreigners  may  share  with  us  what 
we  are  now  enjoying  under  the  Dingley 
Tariff  act? 

Prospering  as  we  did  under  the  old 
McKinley  act,  we  imported  in  the  fiscal 
year  of  1892  $12.50  per  capita,  and  ex¬ 
ported  $16.51  per  capita.  Two  years 
later,  when  the  Tariff  had  been  revised 
on  such  lines  as  were  recommended  by 
the  secretary  of  the  Committee  of  the 
American  Reciprocal  Tariff  League,  who 
has  so  recently  addressed  the  Trades 
League,  we  imported  $3  less  per  capita, 
exported  $2.75  less  per  capita  and  con¬ 
sumed  2 y2  bushels  less  wheat  per  capita 
than  was  consumed  under  the  McKinley 
act. 

This  comparison  gives  some  illustra¬ 
tion  of  how  the  nation  prospers  under 
what  you  would  be  led  to  believe  was  a 
system  of  Republican  Protection  which 
is  so  often  denounced  by  Free-Traders 
as  fraud  and  robbery. 

The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Mr. 
Shaw,  has  just  stated  that  the  country 
is  now  being  flooded  with  literature  urg¬ 
ing  that  we  treat  those  best  who  treat 
us  worst. 

We  are  asked  to  reduce  our  Tariff 
for  the  benefit  of  those  countries  which 
increase  theirs,  and  let  those  who  take 
our  goods  in  greatest  quantities  pay  the 
full  rate.  “  The  present  Tariff  act,”  he 
says,  “  has  given  the  American  pro¬ 
ducer,  artisan  and  farmer  such  advan¬ 
tages  in  the  American  home  market  that 
we  actually  sell  to  each  other  more  than 
twice  as  much  as  the  aggregate  interna¬ 
tional  commerce  of  the  whole  world.” 
Is  there  any  reason  here  for  upsetting 
this  happy  condition? 

“  The  Dingley  Tariff  act  has  made  pos¬ 
sible  our  marvelous  development,  until 
the  finished  products  of  our  shops  and 
factories  equal  those  of  any  other  three 


« 


11 


countries  on  the  map.  and  our  daily 
wage  pay  roll  exceeds  that  of  the  bal¬ 
ance  of  the  globe.” 

Selling  at  Lower  Prices  Abroad. 

Speaking  of  the  attack  upon  the  Tar¬ 
iff,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  says : 

“  It  is  based  mainly  on  the  fact  that  we 
sell  some  products  in  foreign  markets  at 
lower  prices  than  we  obtain  for  them 
at  home.”  This  seems  to  act  like  a  red 
flag  to  a  bull,  and  the  American  people 
seem  not  to  understand  that  while  our 
industries  are  so  stimulated  by  the  Tar¬ 
iff  at  times,  there  must  be  moments  of 
over-production,  and  our  surplus  has 
then  to  be  sold  in  foreign  markets  at 
whatever  it  will  fetch  there.  This  proc¬ 
ess  of  running  full  time,  even  at  the  risk 
of  producing  a  surplus,  cheapens  prod¬ 
ucts  to  the  American  consumer,  for  if  our 
mills  made  only  the  goods  that  could  be 
consumed  at  home  the  cost  to  the  Amer¬ 
ican  consumers  would  be  increased.  For 
instance,  a  great  American  carpet  mill 
when  running  full  time  will  make  more 
carpets  than  can  be  sold  to  the  American 
people,  but  by  doing  so  the  cost  of  pro¬ 
duction  is  lessened,  for  the  reason  that 
fixed  charges  are  the  same  when  they 
run  three-quarter  time  as  when  they 
run  on  full  time.  Assuming  that  by 
running  three-quarter  time  they  could 
make  all  the  carpets  they  could  sell  in 
the  United  States,  the  cost  per  yard 
under  these  circumstances  wTould  be  in¬ 
creased  5  cents,  whereas,  by  running 
full  time  the  cost  per  yard  is  decreased 
5  cents  to  the  American  consumer.  The 
unsalable  surplus  portion  is  dumped  on 
the  London  market  and  sold  there  at 
cost  or  less.  This  immediately  sets  up 
a  howl  on  the  part  of  those  Americans 
who  are  seeking  an  excuse  to  rip  open 
the  Tariff,  because  we  sell  cheaper 
abroad  than  at  home. 

• 


Steel  Ralls. 

The  Dingley  Tariff  act  has  been  de¬ 
nounced  because  of  the  report  that  steel 
rails  produced  in  the  United  States  are 
sometimes  sold  abroad  at  lower  prices 
than  in  American  markets.  Therefore, 
the  absurd  proposition  is  advanced  that 
because  of  this  fact  the  Dingley  Tariff 
act  promotes  trusts  and  should  be  imme¬ 
diately  repealed. 

E.  H.  Gary,  chairman  of  the  board  of 
directors  of  the  United  States  Steel  Cor¬ 
poration,  in  his  recent  testimony  before 
a  Congressional  committee  which  was 
investigating  this  subject,  stated  that 
“  the  charge  made  against  his  corpora¬ 
tion  of  having  sold  100,000  tons  of  steel 
plate  to  Belfast  ship  builders  at  consid¬ 
erably  less  than  the  domestic  price  was 
not  true.  His  corporation  had  sold  no 
such  amount  of  steel.” 

He  stated  that  the  facts  were  these : 
The  corporation  sold  3,000  tons  of  steel 
plate  abroad  inyllXH*  but  none  in  1903 
nor  1902. 

He  went  on  to  show  that  the  export 
price  for  rails  made  in  and  exported 
from  Great  Britain,  a  Free-Trade  coun¬ 
try,  was  $25  per  ton,  or  nearly  21  per 
cent,  below  their  home  price,  which  was 
$31.50. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  United 
States  the  home  price  was  $28,  and  the 
United  States  export  price  nearly  $2G, 
the  export  price  being  slightly  under  8 
per  cent,  below  the  price  charged  home 
consumers,  as  against  an  export  price 
of  nearly  21  per  cent,  less  than  the  home 
price  in  Free-Trade  England. 

The  home  price  in  Germany  and  Bel¬ 
gium  was  $30,  and  their  export  price 
$24,  or  20  per  cent,  less  than  their  home 
price.  The  home  price  in  France  and 
Austria-Hungary  was  $31,  and  their  ex¬ 
port  price  $25.50,  or  18  per  cent,  less 

than  their  home  price. 


12 


What  seems  to  affront  those  who  want 
the  Tariff  revised  is  the  fact  that  the 
American  export  price,  like  that  of  the 
rest  of  the  world,  is  also  below  the 
home  price.  To  satisfy  this  class  who 
would  rip  open  the  Tariff  in  order  to 
lower  domestic  prices  to  the  level  of  for¬ 
eign  prices,  we  would  have  to  close 
American  factories  for  a  period  until 
American  wages  could  be  reduced  more 
closely  to  the  European  level.  All  must 
admit  that  American  rails  cannot  be  ex¬ 
ported  without  loss  in  competition  with 
European  rails  when  the  latter  are  made 
by  labor  receiving  fully  one-half  less 
than  that  paid  to  American  labor. 

In  view  of  the  established  fact  that 
nearly  all  of  the  benefits  of  the  Protec¬ 
tion  of  the  Dingley  Tariff  act  go  to 
labor,  how  can  the  Tariff  be  revised 
downward,  and  our  mills  be  kept  run¬ 
ning  on  full  time,  at  the  scale  of  wages 
prevailing  under  the  Dingley  act,  and 
at  the  same  time  compete  abroad  with 
foreign  rails,  often  receiving  a  Govern¬ 
ment  bounty,  as  in  Germany,  the  export 
price  for  which  rails  is  nearly  21  per 
cent,  less  than  their  home  price? 

Considering  that  Great  Britain  is  a 
Free-Trade  country,  and  Germany  has 
a  very  high  Protective  Tariff,  and  with 
an  export  bounty  besides,  and  also  con¬ 
sidering  the  fact  that  in  both  of  these 


countries  the  difference  between  the  -ex¬ 
port  price  and  the  home  price  is  greater 
than  in  the  United  States,  will  the 
Reciprocal  Tariff  League  explain  how 
revising  the  Tariff  downward  will  alter 
established  worldwide  conditions  show¬ 
ing  greater  differences  between  home 
and  export  prices  in  foreign  countries 
than  in  the  United  States? 

The  claims  that  the  Dingley  Tariff 
act  is  responsible  for  charging  a  higher 
price  to  home  than  to  foreign  consum¬ 
ers,  and  that  Tariff  revision  downward 
is  a  remedy  for  a  custom  that  is  world¬ 
wide,  and  practiced  in  both  Free-Trade 
and  Protective  foreign  countries,  are 
both  ridiculous  and  false,  and  to  persist 
in  these  claims  is  neither  fair  nor 
manly. 

The  effect  of  “  Tariff  revision  down¬ 
ward  ”  wTould  be  to  destroy  American 
industries,  injure  American  labor  and 
crush  out  American  competition,  wrhich 
would  end  in  a  foreign  monopoly  of  the 
home  market. 

Comparison  of  Prices. 

Below  is  the  schedule  presented  by 
Mr.  Gary  to  a  committee  of  the  House 
of  Representatives,  comparing  present 
“  free  on  board  ”  mill  prices  on  iron  and 
steel  with  home  and  export  prices,  in 
the  principal  countries  producing  these 
articles : 


COMPARISON  OF  PRESENT  F.O.B.  MILL  PRICES  WITH  DOMESTIC  AND  EXPORT  PRICES  ON  IRON' 


AND  STEEL  IN  THE  PRINCIPAL  PRODUCING  COUNTRIES. 

Structural  material,  including  shapes, 

, - Rails. - N  plates,  bars,  angles  and  tees. 

Percentage  Percentage 

Home  of  dif-  of  dif- 

Country.  price.  Export  price.  ference.  Home  price.  Export  price,  ference. 

Great  Britain . $31.50  $25.00  20.97  $1.60  $1.35  15.60 

Germany  .  30.00  24.00  20.00  1.50  1.25  16.66 

France  .  31.00  25.50  18.00  1  65  1.45  12.00 

Austria-Hungary...  31.00  25.50  18.00  1.50  1.35  10.00 

Belgium .  30.00  24.00  20.00  1.55  $1.35  to  1.40  11.30 

United  States .  28.00  $25.00  to  26.60  7.86  $1.60  to  1.70  1.40  to  1.50  12.12 


Note. — The  above  is  a  copy  in  part  from  page  292,  “  Hearings  before  the  Committee  on 
Merchant  Marine  and  Fisheries  of  the  House  of  Representatives  on  Senate  bill  529.” 


But  Secretary  Shaw  calls  attention  to 
the  fact  that  Europe  encourages  the 
maintenance  of  two  distinct  schedules  of 
prices — a  higher  one  for  their  domestic 
or  home  consumption  and  a  lower  one 
for  export.  He  says  there  is  scarcely 
a  manufactured  article  in  all  Europe 
that  Cannot  be  purchased  from  10  to  25 
per  cent,  cheaper  for  export  to  the 
United  States  than  for  domestic  con¬ 
sumption  in  countries  of  production.  He 
quotes,  in  confirmation  of  this,  George 
Paish,  editor  of  the  London  “  Statist,” 
the  greatest  economic  journal  in  Europe, 
who  was  Mr.  Shaw’s  guest  in  this  coun¬ 
try. 

Secretary  Shaw  introduced  him  to  an 
audience  that  he  was  addressing,  and 
Mr.  Paish  sat  on  the  platform.  In  the 
course  of  the  discussion  Secretary  Shaw 
made  the  assertion  that  every  European 
government  except  England  encourages 
the  sale  of  merchandise  abroad  at  lower 
prices  than  at  home.  He  added  that  he 
was  not  certain  as  to  the  attitude  of 
England,  and  referred  the  question  to 
Mr.  Paish,  who  promptly  replied :  “  Eng¬ 
land  does  not  encourage  it,  but  the  Brit¬ 
ish  people  practice  it.”  Americans  alone 
of  all  the  people  in  the  world  complain 
that  goods  are  sometimes  sold  abroad 
cheaper  than  at  home.  Those  who  do 
the  most  harm  in  these  attacks  upon 
the  Tariff  in  unsettling  business  are 
Republicans,  who  profess  to  believe  in 
the  principles  of  Projection,  but  who 
are  led  through  the  influence  of  such 
men  as  Mr.  Corwine  to  denounce  the 
successful  application  of  Protection.  If 
the  Tariff  were  opened  with  the  inten¬ 
tion  only  of  crossing  a  “  t  ”  or  dotting 
an  “  i,”  it  would  be  impossible  for  the 
managers  to  keep  it  from  being  distorted, 
so  that  till  it  was  finished  no  one  could 
tell  what  sort  of  Tariff  we  would  then 
have,  nor  would  they  know  how  much 


business  would  be  disturbed  until  after 
the  harm  was  done.  Even  then  if  a  new 
Tariff  was  made,  as  has  always  been 
the  case,  there  would  be  a  lot  of  people 
who  would  be  angry  about  it,  because 
the  changes  which  were  made  some 
might  think  should  not  have  been  made, 
and  others  would  have  been  angry  be¬ 
cause  such  changes  were  not  made. 
Thus  we  are  ever  bound  to  have  Tariff 
agitation  and  demands  for  Tariff  re¬ 
vision  that  will  act  as  disturbances  to' 
business,  so  that  there  is  more  safety 
in  letting  alone  a  law  that  is  working 
so  much  better  than  any  we  have  ever 
before  had  than  in  trying  doubtful  ex¬ 
periments.  To-day  the  most  active  of 
the  small  handful  of  disturbers,  like 
Governors  Cummins,  of  Iowa,  and 
Guild,  of  Massachusetts,  who  are 
asking  for  Tariff  revision,  as  a  reason 
for  this,  point  to  a  few  rates  in  the 
Dingley  act  as  excessive,  while  the  aver¬ 
age  of  all  the  goods  that  are  dutiable 
under  this  act  is  only  in  the  neighbor¬ 
hood  of  45  per  cent. 

A  Sample  of  the  fiew  German  Tariff. 

Secretary  Shaw  calls  attention  to  the 
moderation  of  the  Dingley  act,  in  com¬ 
parison  with  the  new  German  Tariff, 
where  the  rates  were  advanced  50  per 
cent,  in  her  minimum  Tariff  and  210  per 
cent,  in  her  maximum  Tariff.  On  some 
articles  she  increased  her  minimum  Tar¬ 
iff  67  per  cent.,  her  maximum  Tariff 
being  increased  210  per  cent.  She  in¬ 
creased  her  minimum.  Tariff  on  wheat 
flour  40  per  cent,  and  her  maximum 
Tariff  on  this  157  per  cent.  She  in¬ 
creased  her  minimum  Tariff  on  fresh 
beef  80  per  cent,  and  her  maximum  Tar¬ 
iff  on  this  article  200  per  cent.  She  in¬ 
creased  her  minimum  Tariff  on  salted 
and  pickled  beef  100  per  cent,  and  her 
maximum  Tariff  250  per  cent.  She  in¬ 
creased  her  minimum  Tariff  on  high- 


14 


grade  boots  and  shoes  38  per  cent,  and 
on  these  articles  she  increased  her  max¬ 
imum  Tariff  177  per  cent.  She  increased 
her  minimum  Tariff  on  bicycles  and 
parts  thereof  300  per  cent,  and  her  max¬ 
imum  Tariff  on  these  articles  525  per 
cent.  Germany  also  took  a  large  num¬ 
ber  of  articles  from  her  free  list  and 
imposed  minimum  and  maximum  duties 
thereon.  Yet  we  find  plausible  Free- 
Trade  agents  asking  us  to  reduce  our 
Tariff  for  the  benefit  of  this  same  Ger¬ 
many,  requiring  at  the  same  time  full 
rates  on  her  imports  from  such  countries 
as  receive  our  goods  free.  Will  the 
Trades  League  allow  its  eyes  to  be  closed 
by  any  bunco  game  as  shallow  as  this? 
The  Dlngley  Act  a  Revenue  Producer. 

Tariff  revision  downward  and  reci¬ 
procity  caused  such  a  deficit  in  the  rev¬ 
enue  during  Grover  Cleveland’s  admin¬ 
istration  that  we  were  obliged  to  sell 
$262,000,000  of  bonds  to  defray  the  cur¬ 
rent  necessary  expenses  of  the  Govern¬ 
ment. 

Duties  had  been  cut  down  low  in  order 
to  invite  heavier  importations,  or,  in 
other  words,  reciprocity  was  put  into 
practice  on  competitive  products,  and 
while  there  was  enough  brought  in  un¬ 
der  the  Wilson  act  to  paralyze  our  do¬ 
mestic  industries  and  throw  millions  of 
men  employed  therein  out  of  work,  there 
was  not  enough  imported  to  furnish  suffi¬ 
cient  revenue,  and  a  deficit  had  to  be 
met  by  the  sale  of  bonds.  This  created 
distrust,  and  there  was  a  financial  panic 
every  year  during  the  existence  of  that 
Tariff  act.  There  has  been  none  since 
the  Dingley  act  was  enacted  in  its  place. 
Is  this  any  reason  for  its  repeal? 

Contrast  the  Wilson  act  conditions 
with  the  situation  at  present.  The  Ding- 
ley  act  is  proving  to  be  the  best  revenue 
producer  ever  in  force.  Our  increased 
expenditures  are  met  by  increased  cus¬ 


toms  duties  and  increased  internal  reve¬ 
nues  as  well.  The  year  before  last  it 
was  the  Panama  Canal  payments  that 
depleted  the  Treasury,  and  last  year 
the  Cuban  treaty  and  a  great  increase 
in  the  appropriation  for  rural  free  de¬ 
livery,  but  now  the  revenue  exceeds  our 
expenditures,  and  at  the  end  of  the  fiscal 
year  of  1906  there  will  be  a  surplus,  not¬ 
withstanding  enormously  increased  ex¬ 
penditures. 

Our  imports  coming  over  the  top  of 
our  so-called  high  Tariff  Chinese  wall 
are  enormous,  because  of  the  prosperity 
of  the  people,  who,  owing  to  the  present 
Tariff,  are  enjoying  full  employment  at 
high  wages.  It  would  be  folly,  there¬ 
fore,  to  listen  to  the  advice  of  Mr.  Cor- 
wine,  favoring  immediate  Tariff  revision 
and  reciprocity  of  the  German  brand, 
when  the  present  law  continues  to  bring 
such  beneficial  results,  both  to  the  Treas¬ 
ury  of  the  United  States  and  the  Ameri¬ 
can  people,  and  the  Trades  League 
should  be  wary  of  how  its  funds  are 
contributed  to  circulate  such  pamphlets 
as  that  which  contains  his  address. 

Undervaluation  Is  Fraud. 

Examine  for  a  moment  the  attitude  of 
Germany  toward  the  United  States  and 
consider  whether  the  solicitude  for  Ger¬ 
many  on  the  part  of  the  American  Re¬ 
ciprocal  Tariff  League  is  warranted. 
Taking  such  high  authority  as  that  of 
Secretary  Shaw,  in  his  statement  before 
the  House  Committee  of  Ways  and 
Means  in  opposition  to  the  importers’ 
plea  for  opening  hearings  in  cases  of 
alleged  undervaluation.  Secretary  Shaw 
quoted  liberally  from  an  address  recently 
delivered  before  the  German  Chamber 
of  Commerce  at  Berlin,  by  the  chairman 
of  the  meeting,  who  is  one  of  the  largest 
and  most  reputable  merchants  in  the 
whole  of  Germany,  and  a  record  of  it 
was  sent  to  all  the  Chambers  of  Com- 


15 


# 

merce  of  the  realm.  In  that  speech,  ad¬ 
dressed  to  a  body  of  representatives 
from  every  important  manufacturing 
center  in  Germany,  there  were  disclosed 
a  plan  and  policy  of  undervaluation  for 
exports  to  the  United  States  of  the  most 
deliberate  and  systematic  character. 
Plainly  and  without  equivocation,  it  set 
forth  that  a  proposition  to  undervalue 
German  exports  into  the  United  States 
was  not  considered  fraudulent  in  Ger¬ 
many.  The  following  statements  are 
from  the  speech  of  the  chairman  : 

As  a  fact,  the  United  States  is  not  de¬ 
pendent  for  its  existence  on  the  collection  of 
duties,  and  it  can  afford  to  allow  the  falling 
off  of  revenues  “  on  German  goods  ”  for 
their  general  good. 

It  is  clear  that  the  purpose  of  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Tariff  is  to  make  the  entry  of  com¬ 
peting  articles  into  the  United  States  as 
difficult  as  possible.  To  carry  this  out  the 
United  States  Government  agents  resort  to 
the  meanest  and  smallest  measures. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  certification  of  the 
correctness  of  invoices  by  American  consular 
officers  stationed  in  various  districts  of  the 
Empire. 

Investigation  by  the  United  States  cus¬ 
toms  officers  as  to  the  correctness  of  these 
same  invoices,  which  have  in  America  the 
force  and  effect  that  an  oath  would  have  in 
the  German  Empire. 

A  re-examination  by  agents  of  the  Treas¬ 
ury  Department  in  cases  where  there  is  rea¬ 
son  to  suspect  undervaluations. 

By  the  high  penalties  added  for  under¬ 
valuation. 

We  admit  that  an  actual  swindle  is  in¬ 
correct  in  any  business  transaction,  but  un¬ 
dervaluations  of  German  goods  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  entry  into  American  ports  should 
not  be  treated  as  such  unless  fraud  is  posi¬ 
tively  proved.  American  customs  officials 
treat  undervaluations  as  fraudulent  and  ap¬ 
ply  the  penalties. 

Our  goods  have  been  exported  to  the 
United  States  and  to  England  as  well,  we 
all  admit,  at  lower  prices  than  those  in  the 
home  market  in  Germany,  and  there  have 
been  in  some  cases  low  values  made  that  in 
the  United  States  would  be  termed  fraudu¬ 
lent. 

Information  gained  under  the  Dingley 


Tariff  regulations  concerning  the  cost  of 
production  has  been  thwarted  through  the 
prudence  of  our  German  officials,  who  have 
taken  care  that  investigations  of  this  char¬ 
acter  shall  throw  little  light  on  the  actual 
value  of  their  consignments  to  the  United 
States. 

In  many  cases  trouble  has  been  avoided 
by  having  invoices  consulated  remote  from 
districts  in  which  the  goods  are  manufac¬ 
tured.  But  we  must  follow  up  this  whole 
question  as  to  the  rights  of  consular  or 
other  American  officers  to  pry  into  our  busi¬ 
ness  for  the  sole  purpose  of  keeping  our 
merchandise  out  of  the  United  States.  In 
this  we  are  assured  of  the  cordial  support 
of  the  Imperial  Government.  If  we  stand 
together  firmly  as  a  body,  aided  and  sup¬ 
ported  by  our  German  Boards  of  Trade,  we 
can  bring  about  a  change  that  will  be  of 
untold  benefit  to  our  American  export  trade. 

“  Now,  mark  you,”  says  Secretary 
Shaw,  “  from  this  German  standpoint  it 
is  not  a  fraud  to  undervalue,  but  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  Dingley  Tariff  act 
it  is  a  fraud  to  undervalue.  Market 
value  as  defined  under  American  law  is 
the  wholesale  price  at  the  time  of  ex¬ 
port.  The  trouble  with  the  United 
State  Treasury  Department  lies  in  the 
fact  of  Germany  having  two  sets  of 
prices — a  lower  one  for  export  and  a 
higher  one  for  home  trade.” 

Mr.  Corwine  has  pointed  to  the  fact 
that  branch  factories  in  Canada  have 
been  erected  by  American  manufactur¬ 
ers,  which  shows  in  his  view  that  the 
United  States  Tariff  ought  to  be  revised. 
Just  what  effect  the  revision  of  the  Tar¬ 
iff  would  have  on  these  factories  is  not 
apparent.  It  is  the  Canadian  Tariff 
that  needs  to  be  revised  to  effect  any 
change  in  this  policy.  It  is  not  the 
Dingley  Tariff  act  that  has  moved  the 
factories  to  Canada,  but  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Canadian  Tariff,  which  is  a 
copy  of  our  own.  The  Dingley  Tariff 
act  has  worked  so  admirably  for  the 
United  States  that  Canada  has  copied 
it  for  Canada.  Does  Mr.  Corwine  think 


16 


it  possible  that  Canada  would  cut  down 
her  Tariff  for  the  purpose  of  getting 
these  factories  to  move  back  to  the 
United  States?  When  the  McKinley 
Tariff  went  into  effect  a  number  of  fac¬ 
tories  were  erected  in  this  country  by 
Englishmen,  who  found  they  could  bet¬ 
ter  afford  to  supply  the  demands  of  the 
American  people  for  certain  lines  of 
goods  by  making  them  here  rather  than 
to  make  them  in  England  and  pay  the 
McKinley  Tariff  duties  upon  them  to  get 
them  into  this  country.  The  McKinley 
Tariff  was  enacted  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  about  this  condition  of  affairs. 
In  the  same  way  the  Canadians  have 
passed  a  Tariff  bill  that  is  intended  to 
increase  Canadian  manufactures.  In¬ 
stead  of  trying  to  get  them  to  repeal 
their  Tariff  in  favor  of  the  United  States 
it  would  seem  to  be  a  wiser  thing  to 
endeavor  to  so  adjust  the  Tariff  of  the 
United  States  as  to  compel  the  manu¬ 


facturing  of  goods  in  the  great  ij 
market  in  this  country  by  increasing 
Tariff  where  necessary,  as  German] 
doing,  as  is  illustrated  by  her  inci| 
of  300  per  cent,  in  the  minimum 
her  increase  of  525  per  cent,  in^ 
maximum  duties  upon  bicycles  and  pj 

Without  opportunity  to  fully  exaj 
the  views  which  Mr.  Corwine  so  adrj 
expounds  and  to  determine  their 
lacy  many  of  the  members  of  the  Trj 
League  might  believe  it  impossibl 
escape  his  conclusion  that  Tariff  rev] 
is  a  burning  question  to  be  pushej 
this  year’s  Congressional  campaign. 

The  Trades  League  should  advd 
commercial  stability  and  tranquility] 
not  encourage  experiments  in  line 
those  that  have  been  tried  and 
resulted  in  disaster,  disaster  whic 
often  by  public  men  has  been  said! 
the  American  people  more  than ; 
whole  cost  of  the  Civil  War. 


wnm© 


ll  If 


